Ochre Yards and
The Railway Quarter
Gateshead's newest place to live, work and play
Trail · 50 minutes · 2.4 km
Sir Vincent Raven ran the Greenesfield works as the North Eastern Railway's last Chief Mechanical Engineer. This walk links his plaque, his road, the signal box that carries his name, the house where he lodged as an apprentice, and the bridges and plaques below.
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Start: New Eden House, Fletcher Road — the blue plaque on the front wall.
Raven was born on 3 December 1858, as the plaque has it. Andrew Everett’s biography gives the date and cross-refers it to Raven’s own candidate’s circular for associate membership of the Institution of Civil Engineers, submitted in 1898. The 1859 found in some sources, Wikipedia among them, is wrong.
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The ochre pin is the start. Tap a pin to jump to that stop below.
Fletcher Road · blue plaque on the front wall · NZ 2522 6343 · map
Gateshead Council's 2011 plaque: Sir Vincent Litchfield Raven KBE (1858–1934), last Chief Mechanical Engineer of the North Eastern Railway 1910–22, Superintendent at Woolwich Arsenal 1915–9, knighted 1917, President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers 1924–5.
Raven Road · the listed conversion · NZ 2499 6329 · map
The road named for him runs past Ochre Mews, one of the two historic buildings of the works kept in the redevelopment.
The residents' car park between Willbrook House and Trigo House · look across the railway · NZ 2500 6318 · map
Network Rail's Raven House signalling centre is directly across the tracks from the estate: the brick and dark-clad building with the Network Rail sign, behind the security fence. Not open to the public, but the only stop on this trail that is a working railway building named after him, and it controls trains on the lines his engines once ran.
Off Hudson Street · foot ramp at the top of the car park · NZ 2528 6348 · map
The car park occupies the approach ramp to the 1844 Greenesfield terminus. From the foot ramp at its top you look onto the surviving west platform and across the High Level Bridge to the Castle Keep in Newcastle.
Hudson Street and Wellington Street · the Worsdell House flats entrance · NZ 2531 6344 · map
The block now converted as Worsdell House was built for the North Eastern Railway's Gateshead Literary Institute, which moved here to new premises on Hudson Street in 1889. Founded in 1854, it was one of the NER's institutes for its workmen, with Science and Art and technical classes and a library that grew to 12,000 volumes. Raven's biographer Andrew Everett thinks it the most likely place for the young apprentice to have extended his theoretical knowledge, and Raven was involved with it from the 1880s until he retired. The building later became the Gateshead Railway Club, and since 2007 it has been flats, with Kings Church taking over the club's ground-floor rooms.
Mulgrave Terrace, off St Cuthbert's Road · the old gates and wall · NZ 2525 6316 · map
The business centre stands on the site of Greenesfield House, the villa where Raven lodged when he began his apprenticeship at the works in 1877. From about 1920 the house was the council's health department, and Greenesfield Health Centre was built in its grounds, opening on 27 April 1938 (its plaque is still inside); the council later turned that into the business centre. The house stood beside it into the 1970s and has since been demolished, but the villa's gates and a run of its boundary wall are still here on the terrace. Stand at the gates and you are at Raven's front door.
Central pier, both sides · NZ 2528 6350 · map
Two 2008 plaques: the bridge itself, the first in the world to combine road and rail, by Robert Stephenson, Grade I listed; and its original gas lamps, restored and converted to electric in a £171,000 project that won the Europa Nostra Grand Prize in 2009.
Hillgate · south tower, both sides · NZ 2536 6368 · map
On the west side, the 2003 plaque for the bridge's 75th anniversary, opened by George V in 1928. On the east, the 2004 plaque to the explosion at Wilson & Sons on 6 October 1854 that destroyed both quaysides and killed 53 people.
South side of Hillgate by St Mary's Square · NZ 2537 6367 · map
The 1995 plaque records that Defoe is thought to have lived here around 1710 with the bookseller Joseph Button.
By the Swing Bridge, Pipewellgate · NZ 2526 6363 · map
The 1986 plaque on the former station: the River Tyne Police patrolled from 1845 and this station opened in 1910. Return to the estate up through Riverside Park to High Level Road.